Thursday, 13 July 2017

A Model for Grassroots Organisation and Resistance

Some eighteen months have
passed since the nightmare began for the teaching assistants of County Durham.

In December 2015, Durham County Council (DCC) announced proposals to sack the
county’s 2,700 teaching assistants (TAs) and re-employ the same staff on new
contracts with pay cuts of up to 23 percent.

Many Durham TAs had already
suffered a £1,200 pay cut in 2012.

The TAs’ heroic campaign of resistance in
the past eighteen months has garnered much attention and admiration, in the
region and beyond.

Twice the campaign has brought the county council back to
the negotiating table for protracted talks; twice the council has produced
slightly modified proposals; twice those proposals have been rejected by a
majority of unionised TAs.

Their tireless campaign has been a model for
grassroots organisation and resistance.

On Monday 10 July, TAs affiliated
to Unison and ATL voted to reject the council’s latest lukewarm offer: a
proposal which would have protected the pay of 1,696 TAs, while cutting that of
another 472 staff.

After eighteen months of struggle, the Durham TAs were not
about to acquiesce in the politics of divide and rule.

Unison has now called
for fresh talks with the council.

Ask local people for their
thoughts on the county council, and you will hear choice replies.

Aptly housed
in an unattractive 1960s concrete block at Aykley Heads on the northern fringe
of Durham City, DCC has few advocates.

The closure last year of the Durham
Light Infantry Museum, a focal point of local civic pride, caused much
consternation.

Many locals are aggrieved at the council’s complicity in the
takeover of residential areas by private landlords converting family homes into
multiple-occupancy student accommodation, forcing local people out of the city
centre.

More eyebrows are raised at the proposals for the imminent bulldozing
of County Hall itself – in a project which will cost £50 million but will, we
are told, bring 6,000 private-sector jobs to the city in the long-term.

Throw the abysmal experience of
the county’s TAs into the mix, and DCC is a target for a cacophony of
resentment.

The depth of public support for the TAs during strike action in
November 2016 was striking.

Surveyed by the council in 2013, a majority of
ratepayers demanded that, whatever the tidal wave of austerity entailed, the
council must ringfence its education spending commitments.

DCC, for its part,
cites the shattering austerity imposed by Westminster.

The council says it must
make a further £64 million of ‘savings’ by 2020, on top of the £186 million of
cuts since 2011.

Funding from central government has been cut by 49 percent in
the last six years.

Durham County Council’s record in
the past few years makes for grim reading.

The teaching assistant dispute has
been especially ill-handled.

At best, a troubled DCC has subjected public
sector staff carrying out vital work in the county’s schools to protracted
turmoil; at worst, the council has been duplicitous, attempting to break the
TAs’ resolve through a combination of calculated procrastination and
divisiveness.

The local cannot, of course, be divorced from the national.

The
experience of the county Durham TAs is that of millions of workers across the
UK in microcosm.

In a country where 6 million people earn less than the living
wage; 4 million children are growing up in poverty; and some public sector
employees have suffered a 14 percent real-terms pay cut since 2010, something
is deeply wrong.

The Conservatives’ war on the
public sector is at its most brutal in areas like County Durham, ranked 320th
out of 394 UK local authorities in disposable household income per capita in
the latest available figures.

Central government’s treatment of County Durham
exposes the true colours of Tory rule.

Durham County Council is projected, by
2020, to have suffered over £250 million worth of budgetary cuts in his budget
from central government since 2011.

By 2019-2020, the total central government
grant to local councils is projected to drop to £5.5 billion nationally.

Seven
years ago, the grant was over £25 billion.

The Conservatives have been
characteristically ruthless in their savage attacks on the infrastructure of
local government.

While public sector workers, not
least County Durham’s TAs, suffer injustice and the interminable corrosion of
pay, the Conservative government which orchestrates this campaign against the
state enters willingly into sweetheart deals with private-sector
multinationals.

When, gallingly, they talk of a ‘Northern Powerhouse’, the
‘investment’ to which Tories refer translates as secretive guarantees to big
business, not least car manufacturers like Hitachi and Nissan.

Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has suggested as much as £36 billion of would-be
public funding is frittered away every year in deals struck between the
government, HMRC, and major companies.

Local government, meanwhile, is left to
rot, and some of the most ill-rewarded workers in the poorest areas of the UK
are left facing life-changing consequences.

The vicious slashing of local
government budgets, with such damaging consequences, takes place in the context
of rising inequality nationwide.

The richest 1,000 people in Britain increased
their wealth by £83 billion in 2016.

Inequality is rising at a faster rate than
under Thatcher.

Buckingham Palace, meanwhile, benefits from refurbishment to
the tune of £370 million.

Durham’s TAs continue their valiant campaign in the
hope of being able to pay off mortgages in former pit villages.

Despite the
public implorations of Jeremy Corbyn and Shadow Education Secretary Angela
Rayner to resolve the local crisis, Durham’s beleaguered Labour-controlled county council remains locked in a stand-off with the heroic TAs.

The
experience of the heroic Durham TAs is one fight among many in the pernicious
politics of austerity Britain.

Of course, if they had listened to me, then they would already have won.But hey, ho. They did not deprive Labour of Overall Control. Nor did they send the shockwave that would have been the election of their champion, Owen Temple, to Parliament.Had either of those things happened, then the whole thing would have been settled in their favour within 24 hours.Again I say that when that happens, then I shall see the point of Laura Pidcock, who clearly intends to be the MP here for 35 or 40 years, and thus long into my old age.Then. But not before.